ll living, will
show this vein of belief running all the way through. The idea that
base-ball owed its origin to any foreign game was not only not
entertained, but indignantly repudiated by the men of that time; and in
pursuing his investigations the writer has discovered that this feeling
still exists in a most emphatic form.

In view of the foregoing we may safely say that base-ball was played in
America as early, at least, as the beginning of this century.

It may be instructive now to inquire as to the antiquity of the "old
English game" from which baseball is said to have sprung. Deferring for
the present the consideration of its resemblance to base-ball, what
proof have we of its venerable existence? Looking, primarily, to the
first editions of old English authorities on out-door sports, I have
been unable to find any record that such a game as "rounders" was known.
I may have been unfortunate in my searches, for, though I have exhausted
every available source of information, I have not discovered any mention
of it.

The first standard English writer to speak of rounders is "Stonehenge"
in his Manual of Sports, London, 1856. Since then almost every English
work on out-door sports describes the "old [with an emphasis] English
game of rounders," and in the same connection declares it to be the germ
of the American base-ball; and yet, curiously enough, not one of them
gives us any authority even for dubbing it "old," much less for calling
it the origin of our game. But in 1856 base-ball had been played here
for many years; it had already attracted attention as the popular sport,
and by 1860 was known in slightly differing forms all over the country.
To all these later English writers, therefore, its existence and general
principles must have been familiar, and it is consequently remarkable
that, in view of their claim, they have given us no more particulars of
the game of rounders. Are we to accept this assertion without reserve,
when an investigation would seem to indicate that baseball is really the
older game? If this English game was then a common school-boy sport, as
now claimed, it seems almost incredible that it should have escaped the
notice of all the writers of the first half of the century; and yet no
sooner does base-ball become famous as the American game than English
writers discover that there is an old and popular English game from
which it is descended. Many of the games which the earlier writers